Intel's CEO search begins, and the nominees are...

The process of picking the next Intel leader is clearly new. In the
past, new candidates were carefully groomed, serving long
apprenticeships as chief operating officers. From Gordon Moore to Andy
Grove to Craig Barrett and Paul Otellini “you could see who would be
next years in advance…you could set you clock to it,” said Nathan
Brookwood, long time Intel watcher at Insight64 (Saratoga, Calif.).

Otellini
had been grooming Sean Maloney as his successor, but a tragic stroke
set Maloney on another path. Maloney recovered to take the helm of Intel
China for a time before announcing his own retirement plans.

Intel
could pick an insider. In tandem with the announcement that Otellini
will retire, the company named a triumvirate of three executive vice
presidents who are clearly candidates for the CEO seat. However, we
expect they will provide an incoming outsider with a ready set of
lieutenants to help navigate Intel’s inner workings.

“Frankly,
many of Intel's strongest executives have left over the last few years,”
said Kevin Krewell, senior analyst with the Linley Group (Mountain
View, Calif.) and editor of the Microprocessor Report. “I believe that
is one of the reasons the board is considering an external candidate,
which is stunning news considering Intel's internally-focused corporate
culture.”

Others see Intel sticking to its old succession plan.
“An internal replacement of Otellini would appear to be a more
transparent transition, and would likely be a move where they can keep
their current strategic plans they’ve invested so heavily in, on pace,
and without major hiccups,” said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst
at IHS

That said, here's our list of possible candidates to be
the next Intel CEO. Don’t be too surprised if Intel’s actual choice is a
name unfamiliar to the semiconductor, and even the electronics
industry.

Of the three current Intel executives promoted this week, several analysts think Brian Krzanich, COO and head of worldwide manufacturing, has the best shot to replace Otellini. “The technology and manufacturing group is the soul of Intel,” noted industry analyst Nathan Brookwood.

Large and successful companies usually get frozen into old ways of doing things, too many mid level managers who have a stake in continuing the old way. And then comes the technology shift, followed by confusion, wild swings, disintegration,...
IBM survived because it had the intellectual capital to shift to software services.
Intel is too deep into transistors and fabs, lazy designers who use far too many transistors because they know the Fabs can still make them Need to replace Salesman Otellini with someone who has strong leadership in system design. I recommend Prof. Hennessy ( who originated RISC designs, wrote the standard textbook for Architecture and founded MIPS ) and now is the President of Stanford. He can bind together both SoCs for Mobiles and CPUs for Servers with a uniform microcode and scalable architecture. Also being an academic Prof. Hennessy would be a breath of fresh air for the rather Stalinist organization at Intel ( instituted ironically by Andy Grove who himself fled Hungary to escape Stalinism ) to deliver the x86 tick - tock !
Second choice : make Warren East of ARM an offer he can't refuse !

any smart ppl wont' want to get into the deep faction politics of intel. he ll get burned like a piece of toliet paper.
in the end some idiot might pick up the mess and can't work it out. it's the same story as kodak, nokia...
the best solution is just let it disappear.
it's much easier to build some thing ground up rather than transform this huge monster.

intel 's trouble is too deep.
I don't see anyone (smart one) want to pick this huge pile of mess.
the best future of intel might be to let it fall apart.
it will evolve into a big piece of foundry, a piece of fabless processor, a piece of nand...
anyone want to hire me as consultant can msg me... (predicted intel's fate precisely last year)

Intel must find a way to dominate the mobile market, utilizing advanced silicon technology is an advantage but also and perhaps far more important a new mind set. Intel's new CEO first task: Get the mobile market!